Are the X-Men really a civil rights allegory?

The answer

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the X-Men in 1963 during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, using mutants as stand-ins for marginalized minorities facing prejudice. The popular comparison casts Professor Xavier as Martin Luther King Jr., advocating peaceful coexistence, and Magneto as Malcolm X, favoring militant resistance. However, writer Chris Claremont, who transformed the series in the 1980s, said the MLK/Malcolm X parallels were not his primary inspiration. Claremont drew from the Holocaust, making Magneto a Jewish survivor, and cited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin as a closer parallel. He admitted the civil rights analogy grew organically as the series gained cultural distance from the 1960s.